My poem “Scar Tissue” is now available in The Wild Word Issue #17: FILTH. I approached this unique theme from the perspective of illness, in particular the death of my grandmother from appendix cancer.

To read the whole poem, click here, or read the excerpt below:

Before the industrial
revolution hospice meant rest
for any traveler.
Energy is involved now, a sweaty
sheen on the window pane,
the hum of the nurses’ bodies (the traveler
is cold to the touch but she breathes
in a plastic press [deflated but oxygen is flowing])

…………………………………

Signet cells kings’ rings gathered
and were scraped off the wall
of the abdomen with a needle.

The scar tissue knotted
inside her,
the salvific mouth tears
at her delicate intestinal
tissue. What healed her, the doctor explains,
is now starving her. What his knife
couldn’t penetrate
is the beneficence of the body…

…………………………………

Thank you for reading my work.

~Cassandra